Bengaluru : Skydo, India’s leading cross-border payments platform for exporters, has raised USD 10 million in Series A funding led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, with participation from existing investor Elevation Capital.
The Bengaluru-based company serves over 30,000 Indian MSMEs, freelancers, and startups across 50+ cities, processing payments in 32+ currencies. Skydo was among the first to receive the Reserve Bank of India’s In-Principle authorisation as a Payment Aggregator – Cross Border (PA-CB).
Rapidly Growing Exports, Broken Payments
India aspires to export services and goods worth USD 2 trillion by FY30, fuelled by hundreds of thousands of ambitious MSMEs, freelancers and startups. Yet, these exporters often lose 3-7% of their revenue to hidden forex mark-ups and opaque fees. Client payments take days, while subsequent documentation and compliance can extend into weeks and months.
Skydo is building the financial Operating System for Indian exporters – Skydo customers can collect payments locally from clients across countries. These payments are then processed at zero forex fees, transparent flat-fee pricing and 24-hour settlement. The platform instantly generates compliance documents like FIRA, and provides a full suite of accounts receivable tools like invoicing, payment reminders and accounting integration.
“Indian exporters are second to none in their global ambition. Skydo aims to enable them with world class payment infrastructure built from India for the world,” said Srivatsan Sridhar, co-founder and CEO of Skydo. “This funding fuels our mission to build the financial operating system for global commerce – from collections, payouts, card acceptance, compliance automation, and accounting reconciliation.”
Until now, the only options for an Indian MSME exporter to receive payments have been traditional banks or global platforms like PayPal, Wise or Payoneer. Banks charge opaque fees and have lengthy, manual processes for compliance, while global platforms deduct up to 10% of invoice values as fees, and aren’t natively built for Indian exporters’ needs.
“Skydo has simplified our cross-border payments and cut our finance costs dramatically. Their fixed fees and mid-market rates give us full predictability and better value than any bank we’ve worked with,” said Sushant Yadav, founder of marketing agency Optimite.
“I started using Skydo shortly after their launch, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Skydo saved me from haggling with banks on FX rates every time I received a payment, and we’ve saved thousands of hard-earned dollars since switching,” said Abhishek Agarwalla, Co-founder and CEO of AI interviewing company Fabric.
“What really stands out, though, is how customer-obsessed they are. I still remember the entire Skydo team, including Movin and Srivatsan, showing up at our office to listen to our problems firsthand. Most products make money, but Skydo has earned something far rarer: customer trust.”
Scaling to USD 5Bn and Beyond
Skydo grew 4X in the past year, and is targeting USD 5 billion in annualized payment volume within two years.
“We’re demonstrating that India has the talent, compliance muscle, and regulatory clarity to build global financial infrastructure from here, for the world,” said Movin Jain, co-founder of Skydo . “With this round, we aim to expand our global footprint and secure payment licences in key geographies.”
According to Bhavanipratap Rana, Investment Advisor to Susquehanna Asia VC, “India’s evolving cross-border payment landscape, with the introduction of the new PA-CB framework, demands high-quality, focused players with a technological edge. Skydo’s focus on solving the real costs of cross-border transactions – opacity, time, compliance risk, and working capital blockage is a clear differentiator. We are excited to partner with a company that meets the high bar for technological and risk capabilities set by the regulator, and we believe their model is perfectly suited to capturing high-volume B2B business.”
Talking about the investment, Mridul Arora, Partner, Elevation Capital said, “Since partnering with Skydo at their inception, we have been incredibly impressed by the team’s speed, execution, and unwavering product focus. They have done a stellar job scaling the platform 4X in the last year alone, building what is truly a customer-centric international payments powerhouse. We are thrilled to support this next phase of growth as Skydo continues to dismantle barriers and make global trade friction-free and seamless for Indian exporters.”
What This Round Unlocks
The new capital will unlock:
• Geographic expansion: Local collections across 20+ countries in Latin America, Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East
• Global licensing: regulatory licenses in key international markets
• Card infrastructure: Scaling InstaLinks to enable card acceptance for more exporters at half the cost of legacy gateways
• Deeper compliance suite: Enhanced reconciliation and reporting tools to reduce back-office overhead
• Developer platform: APIs and webhooks for SaaS companies, marketplaces, and fintechs to embed Skydo’s global payment rails
